So. Many. Clecos

Why the hell do I need 500 + Clecos? The rudder assembly seems to be an ok indicator of why this is the case. 

When 'complete', a cleco'd assembly highly resembles a metallic porcupine, with the temporary fasteners sticking out of every other hole, but From the first assembly you learn just why it's so important to have so many; you really do need to have at minimum a single cleco in every other hole. I tried assembling with every 3rd hole instead of every other, and things didn't line up. I decided the risk was too great- instead of holes all lining up as they should have, with the odd 1 or 2 slight misalignment, every other patch of holes was misaligned. It was obvious that I shouldn't even attempt to start match drilling with such bad practice, so I didn't, and that was very much the right choice. With every 2nd hole, the alignment was perfect. Because the skin is a curved surface, and the clecos only fasten single points together, it's to your benefit to make sure every other hole is properly fastened.

The rudder assembly from the previous post, resembling the metallic porcupine I spoke of.

As you can see, this is a lot of clecos. I used up one bag of 150, and just barely scratched the second bag, and this is for a single rudder. When I get to the horizontal stabilizers I reckon there's a good chance that I'll be using just about all of them.

  [full size]

This is how it rests on the table, I've learned that this is ok, but one must be extremely careful when moving this assembly. the weight when still is distributed evenly across the clecos, which makes it ok to rest on the table, however, if it's moved in any direction without lifting it first, then all of that movement force will go to whichever cleco is supporting the most weight. This may not be a problem when the object is sufficiently light, but it seems like an easy way to warp skins permanently, so I'm going to be extra careful about this in the future, and I think it would be a good idea for other builders to be careful as well.

One last thing I have to gripe about and that'll be it. These skins are way too  shiny, use low lighting if you have it when you're clecoing skins. The reflection from the overhead lights in my garage was so intense that it was hard to even see where I was putting in clecos sometimes. I bought some shady (lol) lights from menards that claim to be 20,000 lumens. While I doubt this claim is truthful, the box says it "only" uses 220 watts of electrical power, which meas that my 5 lights are costing me about the same to run if they're all on as it does to park at my local college, though that's not including the savings I'm getting from heating the place with 1,100 Watts of power.. So with these lights on, the aluminum skins with their mirror finish can be uncomfortably bright to look at. I developed the skill of 2-handing clecos, using my finger to trace where the hole is, and guiding the tongue the proper place, and I'm pretty sure I could cleco entire ribs with a blindfold now. Adapt, improvise, overcome I think is what the younguns are saying these days.